WA makes progress on gun control

In light of the recent tragedy at Santa Fe High School in Texas, bi-partisan support has grown for new gun-control measures pertaining to at-risk persons and the irresponsible handling of firearms. The change comes after a conflicting report was published by Everytown for Gun Safety claimed that at the time of the study there had been 16 school shootings in the U.S this year with critics of the study claiming that the numbers were misleading and failed to differentiate school shooter situations from accidental discharges of weapons and gun related suicides in order to perpetuate a narrative.

Senator John Braun, R-Centralia gave a statement regarding the state of school safety in Washington State and called for more Bi-Partisan support in Olympia for school security and measures to decrease the likelihood for school shootings: “Violence in American schools frequently results in Republicans and Democrats arguing instead of working to solve the problem. Fortunately, in Washington State, there are areas where we can find agreement and make meaningful improvements to better protect our students and educators. Earlier this year I proposed and advocated for putting $500 million in state bonding authority before voters to expand mental health services and treatment in communities statewide. Others have proposed limiting access to certain types of guns by individuals under age 21, or creating anonymous tip lines where safety concerns could be reported to the proper officials.”

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan has proposed a new gun control measure to the Seattle City Council which would penalize gun owners between $500 and $10,000 who allow their firearms to be used by children or at-risk people by not having their guns being secured in a locked container and rendered inaccessible or unusable for any person other than the authorized user. The new legislation would only cover weapons which were being stored somewhere as opposed to those carried by owners or authorized users. The new legislation would make it a civil infraction when an owner of a gun knows or should know that a minor or at-risk person is likely to access the weapon but then fails to prevent that from happening or fails to report it to authorities.

On the national level, no real solution has been agreed upon by interest groups, with proposals including the arming of teachers in schools, more gun control measures on a variety of weapon types, mental health services for at risk youth, and in some cases the call for an outright ban on guns.

Skeptics to the proposed measures include conservative columnist for Daily Wire Ben Shapiro who in the wake of the “March for our lives” protest commented on the proposed plans for gun control. “We know the FBI was warned specifically about the Parkland shooter not once, but twice — and did nothing… We know that the Broward County Sheriff’s Office was warned multiple times about the Parkland shooter. And yet we are told that the solution to mass shootings is for law-abiding citizens to give more authority to the authorities that failed, and to turn over our only way of protecting ourselves?”

Shapiro continued, “Why in the world would a single law-abiding gun owner hand over his or her weapon to the same authorities that did nothing to protect the children of Parkland? Why would a single law-abiding gun owner turn over his or her capacity for self-defense to people who were incapable of defending children at every step of the way?”